Reader Question: How to blend a script’s physical journey and emotional journey?

Open Forum question from Adrian:

Just a question regarding the process of writing and I’m curious how other writers go ahead with this, but how do you find the perfect marriage between the physical journey and the emotional journey?

Does the concept and physical conflict take hold first or does the emotional journey pave the way for the physical conflict?

I’m sure you’ll get some interesting and diverse responses from GITS readers. As for me, let me first steer you here where you can download (for free, of course) one of my online screenwriting lectures in which I lay out a screenplay paradigm — what I call Narrative Throughline — that presents what is traditionally covered in most paradigms — the plot (what I call Plotline), but also takes into account the underlying psychological realm of the story, what I call Themeline.

The Plotline is comprised of events, both minor and major, that occur largely as a result of the actions and dialogue of characters. Since a movie viewer can see and hear these narrative elements, we can call this is the External World

The Themeline reflects the intentions (tied to actions) and subtext (tied to dialogue) of characters, and is that part of the story world where emotional, psychological, and even spiritual change happens within various characters. Since that process is largely ‘inside’ characters, we can call this the Internal World.

So per your question, the “physical journey” is represented in my language system as the Plotline (External World). And the “emotional journey” is represented as the Themeline (Internal World).

If you look at Narrative Throughline, you’ll see that my Plotline looks very much like a traditional screenplay structure: 3 acts, 10 major plots, or if you prefer the sequence approach, you’ve got 8 sequences (the pages between the major plot points) with an Opening and a Denouement as bookends.

But it’s in this other realm — the Themeline — that you see something that is often missing in other paradigms. Four movements:

Disunity — — — -Deconstruction — — — -Reconstruction — — — -Unity

That reflects the basic trajectory of what is often called the Protagonist transformation arc. Transformation is the single most common narrative archetype in all of literature — and that’s not me talking, that’s per Joseph Campbell, author of the seminal work “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. Transformation is at the core of the one story that Campbell saw reflected in most of the world’s myths: The Hero’s Journey.

For purposes of screenwriting, this is important because most mainstream commercial Hollywood movies have a Protagonist who goes through a process of personal transformation. And that four part movement I’ve noted above — from Disunity to Unity — is reflected over and over and over again as constituting the arc of the Protagonist’s transformation.

Circling back to your question, while acknowledging that every story is different, every writer is different, and that there is no one right way to write, I would encourage you to focus on character first, specifically what is going on in their Internal World. Start with the Protagonist and ask some key questions:

* What do they want (External World goal)?

* What do they need (Internal World goal)?

* Who is keeping them from their goal (Nemesis)?

You can ask other questions to sort through other characters to find out which of them is most connected to the Protagonist’s emotional growth (Attractor), intellectual growth (Mentor), and who tests them (Trickster), but if you really zero in on what they want and what they need, you tap right into the heart of both the Plotline and the Themeline: Want will usually dictate what the Final Struggle is at the end of Act Three, and Need will help you to understand what ‘winning’ that struggle actually means to the Protagonist.

In theory, by delving into the characters, particularly the Protagonist, you can unearth what you require to inform both the shaping of the Plotline and the Themeline.

Of course, at the end of the day, we want our screenplay to tell a story that unfolds organically and as unified tale. If well-written, there will be a sort of ‘dance’ that unifies the Plotline and the Themeline: The events that happen in the External World impact characters in their Internal World, causing them to change; and in turn that change causes the character to make different choices through their actions and dialogue in the External World. And so on and so on, one continuous interweaving of cause-and-effect.

So I’ve anted up, casting my lot with character first. But as noted, everyone approaches the story-crafting process differently — and I welcome all GITS readers to weigh in with how they work at blending their story’s physical and emotional journeys.

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